Anna Gustafson, Michigan Advance

It’s a phrase, or a variation of it, that has surfaced time and again in the year and a half since a mass shooting killed four students at Oxford High School: I am not OK. My children are not OK. My family is not OK.

We are not OK.

“Kids are not emotionally well; families are not emotionally well,” said Brian Cooper, who has four children in the Oxford school district, including two high school students who survived the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting. ...

Cradling loaves of bread, she deftly maneuvers under the neon lights of the LMTS Community Outreach Services’ food pantry in Lansing as she stocks the shelves for the people who will start streaming through the doors in a matter of hours.

These days, the number of families turning to the center for milk, bread, cereal, canned goods and more has been soaring — about 100 individuals come every day that the pantry is open, roughly double what it was just one year ago.

“It’s a combination of the government and the price of food being sky high right now,” said Palumbo, who previously went to the pantry for food herself before becoming its volunteer and site coordinator about half a year ago. ...

Like parents across the state — and across the country and world — the new Senate majority leader spent Monday night calling and texting her daughter, a student at Michigan State University, in the wake of a mass shooting that killed three students and critically injured five others.

“I felt like every parent, filled with horror,” Brinks (D-Grand Rapids) said during a phone call with reporters on Tuesday.

Unlike every parent, Brinks can have a direct impact on gun violence in Michigan. She knows that — and she said the Democrats who now control the state House and Senate for the first time in nearly 40 years are poised to usher in reforms meant to curb gun violence in a state that has experienced two mass shootings at schools, one at MSU and one at Oxford High School, in a little more than one year. ...

Yes, they are traumatized; yes, they are overwhelmed with grief and sadness. They know they will need mental health support in the coming days, weeks, months, and years. But, right now, in the wake of three students being killed and five others being injured in a mass shooting at Michigan State University Monday night, they are also deeply angry.

“I’m pissed off that guns are this easy to access,” said Madeleine North, an MSU sophomore originally from Traverse City. “We need major gun reform. We need so much more than what we have currently.”

North then quoted what Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, an MSU alumna, said in her statement issued Wednesday following the shooting: The bloodshed that has stained our country’s college campuses, schools, movie theaters, dance floors, and grocery stores is a “uniquely American problem.” ...

As the world around them was engulfed by sickness and death, they saw their savings — often built over years — being depleted while they attempted to put food on their tables and pay their rent or mortgage on time. Finally, when there was close to nothing left, they turned to the Food Bank Council of Michigan. There, they received assistance applying for benefits through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

“It was months down the line, when they’d exhausted all the resources they’d had, that they came to us; they thought they weren’t eligible [for food assistance] because they had money in their bank account,” said Anna Almanza, the director of policy and SNAP outreach at the Food Bank Council of Michigan.

While many of those Michiganders would likely have been eligible to access food assistance when they had savings, the belief that they weren’t came after years of that largely being true. ...